Cath’s shower blog.     Now into it’s 10th year!! 

For those who know me, you will be aware that I am infinitely interested in how we use water, both in the UK and globally and spend a lot of time at work and at home discussing behaviour around water. A recent encounter with one of those showers where you lose the will to live while rinsing shampoo out of your hair inspired me to start this blog.

As its title suggests it will be about me showering. Now, whilst I think this will be fascinating, it may need a bit of a teaser to get most of you to read further, so sex and drugs and rock and roll should hopefully do it! But seriously, I hope readers will find it interesting and engaging and that it will inspire some of you to spend less time in the shower sorting out the world, and just use it to clean yourself. I also hope it will result in more research into how we can all use less water to bathe.

I travel around the UK quite a lot on business, visit friends in the UK and abroad and have a part share in a canal boat, so I will have quite a few options of different showering experiences to blog about without changing anything much. I guess I will have to have a cold shower at some point which I am not looking forward to, but on the plus side I harbour fantasies of being invited to try out showers both weird and wonderful!

‘Just got side-tracked into your shower blog; read about six and had to waste 2.5 litres on an otherwise unnecessary wee!’

Louise Halestrap
Centre of Alternative Technology

April 2024 – setting fire to the school showers

There are things that burn so brightly in your mind it is like they happened only yesterday. I have many examples of that. Mostly about fires. Pun intended. I used to help Eric with bonfires from about the age of six or seven. When I was ten I was having ...
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February 2024 – showering under a water tower

I don’t mean rigging up a shower underneath a water tower, though that’s quite a cool idea. More it’s showering in water that’s come via a water tower. So where have I been doing that? Well, actually nowhere. The water tower in Sandy Lane, Gower, where we were staying last ...
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January 2024 – showering after a high stakes rescue

A conundrum. A family of six (a mum, Mu, a dad, Eric, and four children aged 8 to 15) is stranded on a sand bank by the incoming tide. They have no phone and the sand bank is completely covered at high tide. There is no one on the main ...
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July 2023 – showering after swimming in the sea

Wait a minute …. You’ve already blogged about beach showers Catharine, back in May 2020. And you didn’t have a lot to say then. Indeed, you had to be bailed out big time by the family. So what’s so different this time? OK, OK I’ve been rumbled. It’s actually a ...
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June 2023 – showering after wild swimming

My sister livers in the Lake District and has been wild swimming/cold water swimming in the lakes and rivers up there for a few years now. I have often promised to go with her and finally stopped being all mouth and no trousers by taking a dip with her. Most ...
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May 2023 – not showering in Amsterdam

Just spent a few days in Amsterdam, city of tulips, canals, bicycles and wild weeing. With Suhith (obvs) and Jim (a mate). Went primarily to see the Vermeer exhibition. But as with any city break, spent a fair time just wandering about the place. But why no shower you ask ...
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July 2022 – showers and adolescents, in their own words

I have blogged about showers and adolescents before but never spammed you with a series of pie charts, an omission for which I profusely apologise… So now to right that wrong. The following data was collected from 370 adolescents across four London secondary schools in Year groups 7-12. The data was ...
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January 2022 – showering for as long as I want. Part 2

Way, way back, in April 2014, I got a bona fide shower invitation to test out a recycling shower. I subsequently blogged about it under showering for as long as I want . It’s taken a long time to get round to ‘showering for as long as I want Part ...
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October 2021 – showering on a sub

Meant to write this while Vigil  was the must see TV programme. Given that it’s set on a sub and all that. Not that you see them showering per se. Now of course it’s Squid Game. Though that series is so disturbing I hope I never get to shower in ...
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September 2021 – how to steal a blog and get away with it

I have a brother. Younger than me. He is third of four. I am first of four. We are both the spit of Eric. We are a bit competitive. Mostly with each other. I always win. He may beg to differ. But just recently I realised there is one thing ...
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June 2021 – not waving but drowning, the real deal

I love this statement sooooooo much I use it often. In fact I have even written a shower blog called ‘Not waving but drowning’ before. Though, re-reading the blog I have no idea quite why I called it that. The statement appears in the title and then never again! That ...
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May 2021 – when the cold shower runs hot

Normally, if hot water comes out of the shower when you have set it to cold you think, ‘bloody plumber!’ And usually you would be right. Happens to the best of us. Plumbers that it. Though to be fair isn’t a plumbing gaffe that I made in my career – ...
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April 2021 – Sid the Spy

On the day that MI5 announce they are opening an Instagram account I thought it was a good a time as any to blog about Sid the Spy. Is this a new app, I hear you ask, that checks out how long you are in the shower, alliteration included to ...
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March 2021 – showering at sea

Crazily this is my one hundredth shower blog! So what better time to have a blog with only a very spurious link to showers? Rhetorical question actually as my mind is already made up and really this blog should be called NOT showering at sea… But at least let me, ...
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February 2021 – showering in a plastic bag

Full on lockdown here in the UK so the chance to visit exotic places and experience the thrill of overseas showers is still null and void. But I did get an unexpected trip a couple of weeks ago. To A and E in Whittington Hospital, Archway to get a gaping ...
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December 2020 – Mea culpa? Nope!

Back in August in a bits and pieces kind of blog I wrote the following. Then I found this bar chart from Reddit. I’m intrigued by the differential between men who shower seven times a week (40.5%) v women (19.3%). More than seven times a week I could potentially understand ...
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November 2020 – the coolest firework…

When posting my October no-blog I rashly promised one about fireworks for November: because I love fireworks because I could do a nice link between the water footprint of fireworks and how that equates to showers, and because I could brag about having a firework named after me, the supremely ...
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October 2020 – shower blog on hold due to Covid 19 fatigue

Luckily not actual Covid 19 fatigue as (touch wood) I have so far managed to escape catching the virus. But the depressing and inexorable rise of it again across Europe has seeped into my brain and October has come and (almost) gone and I couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm for ...
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September 2020 – Showering on ‘The Bridge’

I have a cousin who lives in Malmo and Suhith is a massive fan of the Scandi Noir series The Bridge so thought it would be a great idea to combine the two in a road trip to Sweden, which would, of course, necessitate driving over the afore mentioned bridge ...
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August 2020 – lockdown

‘That’s the shower blog for you. Always just behind the eight ball.’ As Mu wouldn’t have said cos she wasn’t a big sports fan. (Though she did know that Georgie Best ‘played for England’ – LOL). She was also a big fan of ‘it doesn’t matter whether you win or ...
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July 2020 – cute animals in showers

Finally here – after being erroneously promised for both May and June – a blog about cute animals in showers including frogs, rats, penguins and more… Frogs I just love Australian green tree frogs…And Christopher’s loo and shower used to be full of them. As he still lives in the ...
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June 2020 – go to work, don’t go to work

This  blog was originally entitled cute animals in showers. But I thought I would take a leaf from the UK Government, prove that frankly I don’t know my arse from my elbow, and just chuck a pig’s ear of a blog out into the ether (though obviously always guided by ...
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May 2020 – beach showers

This is my 92nd shower blog! Can’t quite believe I have got this far without blogging about beach showers. ‘Why ever not?’ I mused. But having spent the last 1.5 hours googling pictures and info and getting hardly anywhere, I think I understand why… As I began my research I ...
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April 2020 – the Kelda shower

Despite being in lockdown have found a shower I didn’t know about! It’s called the Kelda shower and has a flow rate of just 4 litres/minute. There are a pile of them installed in the London Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park. That’s the good news. The bad news is ...
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March 2020 – Artificial snow

March – artificial snow No I haven’t been showering under a snow cannon – too cold. But I have been skiing recently, in the Italian Alps. There wasn’t anything of note to write about the showers apart from the fact that, weirdly, the hotel had a shower but no shower ...
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February 2020 – The Methven VJet

We went to Bath. I met a spy. I took this photo of an ancient Greek message. I think we were told it says, ‘Have a short shower’, but my memory may have failed me. I also tasted the water from the pump room. Warm. Full of minerals. Tasted disgusting! ...
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January 2020 – in memory of Eric

After the excitement of nearly making our fortunes during a beach clean-up we went to Bath and I met a spy! Not only that I found myself standing outside a restaurant just after I’d blown his cover desperately trying to casually chat on about anything other than undercover surveillance or ...
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December 2019 – a get rich quick opportunity

Methven – a New Zealand company, founded in 1886 as a manufacturer of high quality brassware and now well known for their innovative shower heads – recently gave us three of them to trial. I am not 100% sure if they are clear on how this shower blog works but ...
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September 2019 – in memory of Mu

Mu, my mum, died in August this year. She had been ill for a year and I am glad she is no longer suffering, but I am immeasurably sad and miss her so much. Without her I wouldn’t be here (obviously) but also without Mu and Eric’s rubbish shower I ...
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December 2018 – completing the circle

So my last shower blog for a while (sad face emoji) but where better to end than where I started off all those years ago (85 blogs to be exact!)? And that is with Mu and Eric’s shower… But a couple of other things first. Number 1: a small nod ...
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November 2018 – showering in Venice

It’s been a good few years since I last visited Venice, but I think it’s an amazing city and as the shower blog is going to have a break in 2019 while I populate the technical side of the website, it was kind of now or never. Plus it gives ...
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October 2018 – showering in Marrakech

Suhith and a friend (hi Pramila) went to Marrakech a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was a good opportunity to look at the water supply situation in that city, especially given its position as a major international tourist destination. Its population is just over one million but ...
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September 2018 – Designs to shower shorter 3

This time last year I was using the designs of pupils in Kelmscott and Latymer Secondary School as part of Designs to shower shorter Part 1 and Part 2 . Now a whole new pile of teens have addressed the conundrum of how to stop their peers killing the polar ...
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Aug 2018 – Views from a shower 3

Back in April I blogged about shower cubicles. And in the process took this fab photo of what I can see when I’m having a shower. I then posted Views from a shower 1  followed by Views from a shower 2. As avid followers of this blog soon found out ...
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July 2018 – Views from a shower 2

Back in April I blogged about shower cubicles. And in the process took this fab photo of what I can see when I’m having a shower. I then wrote Views from a shower 1  and now here is Views from a shower 2. Usually in a Part 2 blog I ...
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June 2018 – Views from a shower 1

Back in April I blogged about shower cubicles. And in the process took this fab photo of what I can see when I’m having a shower. It received soooooooooooooooo many likes I thought it would make a fab subject for a blog in itself. When you type in ‘views from ...
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May 2018 – Showering in Siberia

Novosibirsk is the capital of Siberia, the home of Russian space exploration and the latest in the ‘Where in the world is Cath showering now?’ destination. For those loyal blog readers who smell a rat along the lines of my December 2013 blog showering in space, fear not for I ...
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April 2018 – Shower cubicles

Back in Wales at Easter under the disco shower. Since I have blogged about that already I’m now turning my attention to the shower cubicle, of which they have two. Why the shower cubicle you ask? Well I had wanted to wax lyrical about fun in the surf but sheeting ...
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March 2018 – Random shower stories 4

Regular readers of this blog will probably recognize a pattern here. Every time I am short of a blog I gather a whole pile of shower bits and bobs together which have piqued my interest but don’t really merit their own blog. I had thought to purloin some more ‘How ...
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February 2018 – the mysterious case of where the water vapour goes

What weighs more? A tonne of feathers or a tonne of lead? Umm and this has to do with showers how?? Well, let me explain…Years ago I spent a few weeks staying with a friend (hi Judy!) who lived in New York. She rented a flat in an old brownstone ...
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January 2018 – YouTube sensations

Colin of ‘Oi Colin’ fame and I have been batting around the idea of visiting the Hansgrohe waterstudio showrooms down in Clerkenwell for a few months now. Via twitter… as you do… We finally made it last week and were like kids in sweetshop / piglets in mud / a ...
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December 2017 – Shower curtains to die for

As 2017 came to a close I ran out of time to do part 2 of pressure v flow for the shower blog. And began to worry that maybe the shower blog’s time was up… But as 2018 dawned I realised our flash shower screen, while fabulously easy to keep ...
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November 2017 – Pressure v flow revisited Part 1

‘We need high pressure to get a decent flow rate from our shower and thus a satisfying shower experience’. I often say this and it is true. But it’s not the whole story.  I had planned for this blog to be a bit of a bish bosh… ‘the greater the ...
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October 2017 – The 30 day cold shower challenge  

Nothing screams reality more in the modern world unless the word ‘challenge’ is tacked onto the end of a stupid thing to do …So, although I have blogged about cold showers before and the Kneipp cure (courtesy of Rossi and Margret who are German friends of mine), and took a ...
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September 2017 – Designs to shower shorter 2

Back again at my nefarious activity of nicking the designs of the yoof! (Part 1 was back in July) Shower Power This is a rather impressive offering from Mumtaz, Zain and Umar. Not quite sure why Dorian and Amaar got bounced out of the group… but hey… There are recycling ...
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August 2017 – Cath is ‘away’

And not with the fairies. Though I can understand if that thought had fleetingly crossed any loyal blog reader’s mind. Of course, normally under such circumstances a guest blogger would leap into the slot vacated by any lead author being temporarily indisposed. But I couldn’t actually find any other shower ...
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July 2017 – Designs to shower shorter 1 (of loads!)

Just before you, the loyal readers, get all impressed by the fact that not only do I have time to write the best showering blog on the internet, the award winning all-things-watery ech2o newsletter and invented Frankie the flamingo and her sidekick Clarence (the crab who doesn’t like pooh on ...
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June 2017 – Disco Shower!

(Not to be confused with disco loo saves the world) Avid readers of this blog might remember that I have already blogged about showering under a disco ball back in Nov 2013 when it was just one of many fabulous showers . Those very same readers (and big respect if ...
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May 2017 – crunching the numbers at 5 Roseberry Gardens

 A couple of years back a ten year old girl (one of thousands or primary school children who I have been lucky enough to chat to about being water smart over the last few years) told me that at her home there was a problem with the plumbing which meant ...
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April 2017 – showering in fog

Now that is a new idea … or maybe not… But at least it puts off the moment when I have to ‘fess up that despite being the ‘best aunty Cath in the world’ my powers of persuasion of how a four minute shower will save the polar bears hasn’t ...
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March 2017 – showering for decontamination

Back in December for my blog on how long it actually takes to get clean in the shower I was chasing a few friends who are academics for dystopian sci-fi 1960’s pictures of people in showers. I should have just gone straight for the decontamination showers folder!         Or ...
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February 2017 – a history of showers part 2

A preamble So it was Christmas and Andy Goodson said I was one of his favourite people even though he didn’t know me that well. And that maybe that was because we had known each other in a past life. I guess any normal person would have replied, ‘Oh that’s ...
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January 2017 – a history of showers by a. n. other

Thank goodness for WWW land! When your back is against the wall because you have been overly concentrating on making sure you don’t bomb at you first ever stand-up gig, and suddenly there is less than one week left of the month and you haven’t even started the shower blog, ...
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December 2016 – how long does it actually take to get clean in the shower?

I ask this question since I spent a week in a science lab recently with a stream of eager 7-11 year olds coming in to learn how to be water smart. This was part of Thames Water’s fabulous Water Efficiency in Schools Programme, and one of the main messages we ...
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November 2016 – (not) showering at the office

I started this blog back in June 2016 before getting diverted into blogging about showering on a canal boat instead. So, trying again…  Warning: this is quite a long and technical blog but at least there is a joke at the end. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s taken me ...
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October 2016 – how often do you shower?

As the days get shorter and my stomach ramps up its Neanderthal message of ‘winter is coming, food will get scarce, so eat eat eat’ I thought I would blog about how often as compared to how long in the shower. Hopefully I haven’t blogged about this before but hey, ...
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September 2016 – Extreme showering Part 2

Those of you who read the blog avidly will know I was camping in France in the summer, and were no doubt confused that whilst I listed the vagaries of showers in French campsites I hadn’t touched on the carbon content therein as I did when showering in Austria and ...
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August 2016 – Poolgate!

Never one to miss a trick this month’s blog asks whether the divers forgetting to take their obligatory pre public pool shower was the reason for Poolgate, as suggested by some commentators following Tom Daley’s tweet; or an over keenness on the part of the Olympic organisers to save a ...
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July 2016 – Showering in a post Brexit world

It’s no secret I was a strong advocate to Remain – see the contribution I made to the Green Register blog Brexit or Bremain – what it means for the construction industry – and events post the result have not changed my mind. In fact if anything they have made ...
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June 2016 – Showering on a canal boat

I was going to blog about the efficiencies of heating hot water using an Air Source Heat Pump, (as that is how the water is heated at the ech2o offices). But to do that I had to explain why I was showering in the office in the first place which ...
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May 2016 – Shower spray patterns

I started a blog about this a couple of years back only to find that googling ‘shower patterns’ doesn’t get you very far in www.world. But having received a complimentary Ecocamel Orbit shower head (cheers guys!) I thought I should revisit. Otherwise this blog will just look like an advertorial, ...
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April 2016 – Extreme showering

How extreme? Well 6m below sea level – extreme enough for you? Bit like the well-known extreme ironing. Those who know me well will be on a knife edge at this point. After all it is something that I would possibly do in the interests of science – after all, ...
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March 2016 – How low can the flow rate go?

To misquote Jane Austen, it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that if you reduce the flow rate from a shower people will just stay longer under it and so no water will actually be saved. I have always struggled with this statement, especially as it is usually used by producers ...
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February 2016 – Showering in fossilised water

Showering in fossilised water… how cool does that sound? Transported back in time to when dinosaurs roamed the earth for a quick shower under a waterfall for the purposes of this blog… But, I hear some of you ask, haven’t you already done that Cath, back when you were showering with ...
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January 2016 – Braving the shower at Roseberry Gardens

As a year of showering variously hits its half century (I know, I can’t quite believe it either), I thought a blog about the trepidation with which those who stay overnight at our house approach their shower would be in order. Users are faced with a selection of gizmos to ...
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December 2015 – Showering in a design icon 2

For those of you who loved the geeky science bits of ‘showering in a design icon 1’ back in October, you will be somewhat disappointed by this month’s blog. But for those of you not too keen on the math’s content of my blogs – hi Lydia and Suhith – ...
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November 2015 – Showering with Frankie the flamingo

As Safa leaves us for bigger (though obviously not better – no sinking flamingos or crabs who don’t like poo on their heads at her new job) things she finally makes the shower blog – the pinnacle of success for everyone who works at ech2o. There is not a lot ...
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October 2015 – Showering in a design icon

“How do you improve a design icon?” asks the latest Fiat 500 ad. Before proving essentially that you can’t. Which is my way of pacifying Minty whilst segwaying neatly into the subject of this month’s blog, a shower that its inventers hope will become a design icon in its own ...
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September 2015 – Showering with the Neanderthals

Well, obviously not actually showering with them! After all they were obliterated some 40,000 years ago and not even Mu (my mum for those new to this blog) would believe that tale from her oldest daughter. Though, as I constantly enjoy reminding her, she was very impressed with my invitation ...
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August 2015 – Showering for as long as I want? Part 2

I was in Exeter last week at the Water Efficiency Network’s annual conference. Had a great time especially enlivened by: Stuart Broad taking 8 for 15 as the Aussies were skittled out for 60 in the shortest test innings ever – just brilliant! my shower in the student accommodation having ...
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July 2015 – Random shower stories 3

Showering at Glastonbury I wish! Given the fact I have been to Glasto five or six times and never even got within sniffing distance of a shower. In fact, with minimum 3 hour queues to the only hot showers available and never seeing a cold shower this section would better ...
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June 2015 – What do you do while the shower gets hot?

Sometime last year I read that the average person in the UK runs the shower for 1.75 minutes before they get under it. My immediate thought was ‘WTF??’ I get it that no-one wants to jump under a cold shower and start washing while they wait for the water to ...
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May 2015 – Adventures in the world of adolescents part 2

Back splashing around with adolescents this month in their showers as promised. Plus a bit of info about behaviour change science and methodologies. (A year of showering variously – always keen to expand its reader’s knowledge…). Behaviour change science is (as you would expect) the study of what is the ...
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April 2015 – Back to the numbers…

Can’t remember when I last did a shower blog which focussed on numbers (Well I can’t remember when you didn’t. But I know what you mean cos I lost the will to live halfway through this one. Ed). Yeah, yeah whatever boss. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. This blog ...
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March 2015 – Adventures in the world of adolescents and showering

As promised in my last blog, a look into the secret world of adolescents, how and why they shower like they do and whether anything can be done to change it. Or, more likely, just some watch and wonder anecdotes… But first things first. We need something that grabs their ...
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February 2015 – The four minute shower challenge

I do love the 4 minute shower challenge! Not the bit of kit itself, which, if truth be told, looks ever more cheap as everyone falls over themselves in a race to produce the cheapest possible timer. For example, most Water Companies have pretty much moved from the shower bob ...
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January 2015 – Not waving but drowning

‘New Year – New Bathroom’ as the well-known saying goes. We decided to redecorate the bathroom, mainly so that we had more tiles and less grouting; we moved from hundreds of tiles measuring 22 by 22mm to less than 40 measuring 250 by 400mm. So far so good. It looks ...
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December 2014 – Showering with polar bears

Hard-core showering in the extreme. Though (having learnt from my showering in space blog) I would like at this point to add the rider that – “No Mu, I haven’t been showering with real polar bears, so rest assured your eldest daughter will still be around for some time writing ...
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November 2014 – Shower trials Part 1

Another blog title that could be read in multiple ways. If it wasn’t already almost December I would wax lyrical about sharp-suited lawyers, bewigged judges and paying off the jury. But it is so tough… I have been meaning to blog about shower heads for a long time now, and ...
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October 2014 – Hijacked!

Despite the exciting title which conjures up images of me being bundled into an unmarked car, and held in an unused shower block for several weeks until I fashion an escape using just my sheer ingenuity, fearless attitude, bits of pipe, an old bar of soap, some broken tiles and ...
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September 2014 – Relative humidity

No not getting damp when Lyds, Ols or Jon are staying, leaving wet towels everywhere and spending too long in the shower. As if they would! A preamble. Dan has just got a temperature and humidity probe. Ever since he’s had it we have been bombarded with daily (sometimes hourly) ...
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August 2014 – Random shower stories 2

Want to get rich quick? Invest in an off-shore shower manufacturing facility Had a shower in a hotel recently? Noticed the shiny new shower head? Well, even if you didn’t the chances are is that the shower head would have been less than three months old, however much in disrepair ...
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July 2014 – Shower curtains and not the Coandă effect

‘Why does this always happen?’ I mused last week at the AECB annual conference as the shower curtain was drawn inexorably towards me. The curtain in question was whitish and the tiles were a rather unfetching light fawn but the shower controls were fab! Chunky stainless steel so probably prison ...
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June 2014 – Electric showers

This particular blog has been a long time in the making, almost a year. But it has finally arrived and the world is a better place for it… 85% of UK households have a shower; (this includes showers connected to bath taps.) And 52% of all showers sold in the ...
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May 2014 – Random shower stories

Solar and short showers I have a good friend who lives in Brighton (hi Paul) who put in an oversized solar thermal system as he wanted to maximise his collection of hot water from the sun and then despaired when he realised (thanks to a fab bit of monitoring kit) ...
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April 2014 – Showering for as long as I want

First, an apology to regular readers of this blog. In December 2013  I explained how I had been contacted by the MIR space station and offered to try out their shower. There then followed a description of how you shower in space, a short history of showering in space and ...
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March 2014 – Showering in the desert

Still in India and desperate to leave the Delhi smog and unseasonably cold weather behind, we headed for Rajasthan along with 25% of the foreign tourists who visit India every year. Rajasthan is the largest state in India and also the driest, especially in the west which is where we ...
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February 2014 – A bucket bath in Delhi

Finally, (and not withstanding last minute visa panics and cancelled flights at great expense) a shower blog from my favourite country, India. We are staying with friends in Delhi, or to be more precise Noida, the urban sprawl in Uttar Pradesh to the east of the capital. Sapna and Samir ...
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January 2014 – Showering in sea water

A nice technical showering blog this month – just how I like them… First things first, I wasn’t on a tropical island under a beachside shower. But it wasn’t cold and stormy Britain either. Though it was technically still British soil as I was in Gibraltar – a business trip ...
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December 2013 – Showering in space

I got a couple of complaints last month that I had a towel round me in the shower. Well as Bob Dylan said in Talkin’ World War Three Blues:“You can please some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time, but you ...
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November 2013 – Fabulous showers

As the missing in transit LED shower tale runs and runs, I thought I would add a touch of glamour to the blog this month. The perfect opportunity presented itself at a friend’s shower in Bristol with its disco globe ball. Apologies for the photo, but I was having a ...
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October 2013 – Dangerous showers part 2

Oh well, sooner than expected dangerous showers part 2 pops up on the radar. At the end of last month’s blog I signed off with: And Legionella? In my opinion its dangers are vastly overplayed (cue ironic death in later years from exactly this if all the lead and asbestos ...
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September 2013 – Dangerous showers

Maybe I should have left this topic until next month to tie in with last October’s spooky showers blog. But my colour emitting shower is still in the post somewhere and I have just spent a few days on our canal boat engaged in an unsuccessful battle to prevent the ...
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August 2013 – Still showering alone

I received this PS to an email from Nick recently: “We are all waiting for the showering with a friend blog!” Well, sorry to disappoint my legion of fans out there but that wait will just have to continue. And when I do blog about it, it is likely to ...
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July 2013 – Showers and greywater

It’s been quite dry recently (relative term – after all this is the UK in summer we are talking about) and having replanted a clematis at the back of our garden, we were concerned about whether it would survive the change. It wasn’t the most auspicious of sites as it ...
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June 2013 – A short history of showering

Having just walked Hadrian’s Wall and in the spirit of ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’, I thought a short history of showering would be a good topic for this month’s blog. I would have liked to report on the flow rates encountered along the way, especially the ...
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May 2013 – Power showers

Over 30 years ago I plumbed in my first power shower – thankfully not the first of many. It was over a freestanding original Victorian cast iron bath (complete with lion’s feet) in the middle of a bathroom that was as big as my sitting room. It was the most powerful ...
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April 2013 – Showering in Salzburg and Prague

An international feel to this month’s blog and the chance to make some interesting comparisons. It wasn’t quite Salzburg, (I was skiing in the Austrian Alps) but it was Prague which is (though Lyds may beg to differ) the capital of the Czech Republic. Both showers were thermostatically controlled, supplied ...
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March 2013 – Should I wee in the shower?

Well, that was a fortuitous turn of events… Saved from blogging about the history of electric showers (of which there seems a paucity of information) by this chance comment from Glamour magazine: “Save water, save the planet, pee in the shower”. According to a poll they ran recently, almost 75 ...
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February 2013 – Showers and swimming pools

Should I shower before I swim? Which is more detrimental to the environment – the chlorine required to clean the swimming pool if I swim in it without showering v the impact of the hot water for a pre-dip shower? It’s complicated to answer because we are comparing apples to ...
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January 2013 – Showering in soft water

Lyds (my niece) was sitting at our kitchen table the other day and said how wonderfully soft, silky and shiny her hair was after two weeks at her mum’s (up in the Lake District), and how rough her hair felt ever since she moved to Sheffield over four years ago ...
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December 2012 – Are hot showers bad for you?

As my year of showering variously comes to a close I am pondering two important questions. Should I continue for another year due to the clamour from my fans? Are long hot showers actually bad for you? The latter question arose from a Defra “messaging event” (presumably from the same ...
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November 2012 – Showering at the Marriott

Finally, 11 months into the year, I have an invitation to test a shower. It doesn’t quite meet my fantasy of “being invited to try out showers both weird and wonderful!” as stated back in January, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that. Mind you, I may postpone it ...
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October 2012 – Scary showers

Showering recently and mulling over what this month’s blog should be about I realised that with the approach of Halloween, spooky showers were really my only possible option. Of course the most famous scary shower scene has to be Psycho – probably the main reason why shower screens are now ...
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September 2012 – Cold showers – A public health service broadcast

I went to Germany, I had my cold shower. But that was in August and my idea for this month’s blog was to talk about solar showers since we were spending the last weekend in September down on the Gower peninsula in South Wales walking and surfing. Our friends Rossi ...
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August 2012 – Save money – Shower in London

Spoilt for choice about what to blog about this month. I have been showering in North Wales, Devon, Belgium, Germany and France. I had my first (and only, I hope) cold shower, and measured flow rates in the shower at the Marriot Hotel in Ghent. (Just thought I’d drop that ...
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July 2012 – Singing in the shower

I thought I had read somewhere this was a New Zealand initiative but searching for it on the web I also found it in South Africa. Whatever, it’s a great little saying and leads me nicely into this month’s blog. I had categorically promised no maths this month, and surely ...
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June 2012 – Gas or electric showers? The definitive answer…

Another day, another downpour is the new saying in the ech2o office. Still, every cloud has a silver lining and for me it’s the fact that the dismal weather means I haven’t yet had to brave the cold shower experience and instead can resort to scientific calculations as to whether ...
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May 2012 – Size doesn’t matter!

Or not when you are considering shower performance. Because then it’s the pressure of the water feeding the shower that is far more important than how big the shower head actually is. Hence the success of shower pumps in the UK market which, when connected to a water supply from ...
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April 2012 – Showering with a literary great!

Off to Laugharne, West Wales, home of Dylan Thomas for a long weekend to stay in the house where he lived and wrote Under Milk Wood. Cue thoughts of using the same shower as a literary genius is a very cool subject for the April blog of a year of ...
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March 2012 – Showering to the nearest second

As I hadn’t thought of this idea when I was in Brighton in early January, March provided my first opportunity to measure my water use at a hotel as I was in Manchester overnight. I realised I would need some extra kit, as the hotel was unlikely to provide guests ...
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February 2012 – Showering like the Australians do

An old Australian joke (not sure if it’s still current). “Where is the best place to hide your money in England? Under a bar of soap.” Thought I would talk about my shower use at home. The biggest and best change I made to my shower use was when we ...
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January 2012 – Call this a shower?

At the end of January I was visiting Mu and Eric (my parents). They live in a village near Leicester at the end of a lane next to a farm. The water pressure to their house has always been poor, and as the number of homes in the lane has ...
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